SOON after breakfast that morning Master had hitched the ox to the
boat-jumper.
"My land! Where ye goin'?" Sinth inquired.
"To-morrow we're going out to Benson Falls with you and the children,"
said Master. "I thought we'd better take the ox and what things you need
to-day as far as Link Harris's. That's about four miles down the Leonard
trail. The ox will have all he can do to-morrow if he starts from
Harris's."
The young man said nothing of another purpose which he had in mind--that
of learning, as soon as possible, the nearest way out of the Rainbow
country.
"What does that mean?" Sinth asked.
"Only this--we may have trouble with these pirates, and we want to get
you out of the way. We'll have to travel, and we can't leave you in
the camp alone. You and the children can ride over, and we'll come back
afoot."
So Sinth packed her satchels and a big camp-bag, and all made the
journey to Harris's where they left the ox and the jumper.
It was near six o'clock when they returned to the little camp at
Rainbow. Strong was not there, and after supper, while the dusk fell,
they sat on a blanket by the fire, and Sinth raked the old scrap-heap
of family history to which a score of ancestors had contributed, each
in his time. It was all a kind of folk-lore--mouldy, rusty, distorted,
dreamlike. It told of bears in the pig-pen, of moose in the door-yard,
of panthers glaring through the windows at night, of Indians surrounding
the cabin, and of the torture by fire and steel.
At bedtime Silas had not arrived. Sinth, however, showed no sign of
worry. He knew the woods so well, and there were bear and fish and
sundry temptations, each greater than his bed.
"Mebbe he's took after a bear," Sinth suggested, while she began to
undress the children.
"You remember we heard him shoot soon after he left here," said Master.
"It may be he wounded a bear and followed him."
"Like as not," she answered.
In a moment she put her hand on Master's arm and whispered to him.
"Say!" said she, "I don't want to make trouble, but if I was you I
wouldn't wait no longer for that old fool."
She stalled the needles into her ball of yarn and rolled up her knitting.
She continued, with a sigh of impatience:
"I'd go over to Buckhom an' git that girl, if I had to bring 'er on my
back."
"That's about what I propose to do," said the young man, with a laugh.
"I'm sick o' this dilly-dally in'," said Sinth, "an' I guess she is,
too."
With that she led Socky and Sue into the tent. When the others had gone
to bed Master began to think of the shot which had broken the silence
of the autumn woods that morning. He lighted a lantern and followed
as nearly as he could the direction his friend had taken. By-and-by he
stopped and whistled on his thumb and stood listening. The woods were
silent. Soon he could see where Strong had crossed a little run and
roughed the leaves beyond it. Master followed his tracks and came to the
dead deer. He saw that a bear had found it, and near by there were signs
of a struggle and of fresh blood. Now satisfied that Strong had shot and
followed the bear, he hurried back to camp.
He spread a blanket before the fire and laydown to think and rest in the
silence. Buck-horn was only four miles from the upper end of Rainbow.
One could put his canoe in the Middle Branch and go without a carry to
the outlet of Slender Lake--little more than a great marsh--then up the
still water to a landing within half an hour of Dunmore's. He would make
the journey in a day or two, and, if possible, take the girl out of the
woods.
The night was dark and still. He could hear now and then the fall of
a dead leaf that gave a ghostly whisper as it brushed through high
branches on its way down.
Suddenly another sound caught his ear. He rose and listened. It was a
distant, rhythmic beat of oars on the lake. Who could be crossing
at that hour? He walked to the shore and stood looking off into inky
darkness. He could still hear the sound of oars. Some one was rowing
with a swift, nervous, jumping stroke, and the sound was growing
fainter. Somehow it quickened the pulse of the young, man a little--he
wondered why.